Before our invention a bottler of beverage products that uses refillable glass bottles needed to maintain an inventory of bottles for each product that was to be bottled. In this regard, a bottler would have to maintain a supply of COKE labeled bottles, DIET COKE labeled bottles, COKE ZERO labeled bottles, and many other types and kinds of pre-printed paper labels for use of glass bottles or pre-labeled glass bottles for each brand and product type. This forced the bottler to carry an excessively large inventory of all types of glass bottles necessary to accommodate the varying brands and product types.
Another shortcoming of pre-labeled glass bottles is that it can be difficult to use refillable glass bottles for small brands and new product launches since a costly inventory of pre-labeled glass bottles is necessary to sustain the use of refillable glass bottles in the marketplace.
Another shortcoming of pre-labeled glass bottles is that once a permanent label is applied to the bottle it cannot be changed. This prevents the changing of graphics, limits the ability to run promotional graphics, and prevents the product contents information from being altered on the glass bottle. This can lead to the bottler needing to remove from circulation or otherwise destroy glass bottles because of labeling issues.
Yet another shortcoming of pre-labeled glass bottles is that product variety packs that contain different products in a single multi-package are difficult to fabricate in part due to the fact that pre-labeled bottles prevent different products from being dispensed into bottles on a production line without first insuring that the bottle is labeled correctly. Thus an entire production line must be setup for each individual product type. The different filled products must then be temporarily stored and then usually with manual intervention the product types are arranged for mixing and repackaging in multi-package forms. The need to insure the correct pre-labeled bottle get filled with the correct product in combination with the inability to change the labeling of the glass bottles can create extra steps and costs in the manufacture of multi-packaging.
The shortcomings mentioned above as well as other shortcomings give rise to the long felt need for the present invention.